


it's hit or miss

by granteares



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: First Kiss, M/M, Parswoops, references to real hockey, sara always being bitter over the arizona coyotes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-23
Updated: 2017-02-23
Packaged: 2018-09-26 10:00:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,247
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9885080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/granteares/pseuds/granteares
Summary: Kent can't help but be a sore loser sometimes, especially after a bad game. Jeff always has his back, though-- and his heart, maybe.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Back @ it again with draggin the Yotes lmao I’m really sorry to any Coyotes fans reading this I’m just really Bitter bc they fuck over both of my main teams constantly (Luke Schenn is aight tho… I can’t hate my husband’s bro).
> 
> This is unbeta'd so feel free to let me know of any mistakes.

Okay.

Yeah.

He was in a bad mood.

That was why Kent had ripped his gear off after the game as fast as possible, made his presser as short as possible, showered and changed and left the Gila River Arena without so much as a glance at any of his teammates’ direction.

It wasn’t the mature thing to do. He knew that, in the back of his mind, though it was blocked by the harsh black feeling that was coming over him. But none of his teammates bothered to talk to him, either.

Kent thought maybe they had learned better than to try and interact with Kent when he was _in a mood_ — like his dad had called it when he was a kid, condescending and bitter.

He wasn’t sure if it was a positive or a negative that his teammates avoided him when he was like this. He wasn’t sure if he wanted them to even try to interject and talk him down.

_It’s too late, anyway_ , he thought on the taxi ride back to the hotel which management had set the Aces up in while they were in Glendale. He had been the first one out of the locker room and he doubted anyone else would have gotten finished getting ready fast enough to really catch him. His taxi hadn’t taken too long to arrive after he’d called for it; it was soon enough after the game that they were still hanging around the arena waiting for straggling spectators to take money from. It wasn’t a worry for Kent; he had plenty of money to waste on taxi rides to hotels in order to avoid waiting around for the team bus to leave with everyone else. That was the last thing he had the patience for.

At the least, the taxi ride cooled him down.

Slightly.

The game against the Yotes had been a fucking mess, and even if this was Kent’s second year in the NHL he still managed to be a sore loser sometimes. The final score had been a 5-1 win and Kent had been surprised it hadn’t been a shutout for the Arizona team. It would have been, if Hale hadn’t snuck one past their goalie with forty seconds left in the third.

Nonetheless, the game had been full of harsh checks and dropped gloves and far too many penalty minutes for each team. Even then, Kent hadn’t missed the fact the refs hadn’t called the Coyotes for half the shit they had done, and that always pissed him off.

On top of that, his game had been off. He had played like shit. Again.

That had been the most frustrating thing. To know he was playing below his level but unable to step it up. It threw him off, it threw everyone else off. He hadn’t scored a goal in a week and he was starting to panic, no matter how many times Mickey, the captain, said “don’t worry about it, kid, it happens to everyone; we can’t be super-stars every day of the week; take it easy,” because Kent didn’t know _how_ to take it easy. He didn’t know _how_ not to worry.

He knew there were whisperings starting up. Not on the Aces, not yet, at least. But they were halfway through regular season and Kent was performing considerably less well than he had in his rookie year. In the big picture, he was still doing well. But he couldn’t focus on the big picture. He knew the gossip sites were asking: _sophomore slump, or is Kent Parson worth less than we all bargained for?_ He was supposed to be _better_ than this. He had too much pressure to keep it up. He was _Kent Parson_. People had started saying his name by the end of last season, by the time he had hoisted the Stanley Cup, with the same kind of awe they uttered the name _Zimmermann_.

He tightened his hands into fists, fighting the urge to kick something. The hotel couldn’t be much further. A few more minutes. Then he could take his frustration out on a pillow as a pseudo-punching-bag, maybe. He bit back the string of curse words that threatened to bubble out.

When the taxi pulled to a stop in front of a hotel, Kent hurriedly paid the man, then fumbled out of the vehicle and hurried inside. _Room 602_ , he remembered, rushing to the elevator, feeling some relief when it opened immediately and allowed him to be in front of his room in just a few minutes. He grabbed the keycard from his wallet, hands shaking slightly as the finicky plastic took three times to register and finally unlock the door.

_Finally_.

He pushed his way inside and let the door slam shut behind him as he finally felt a rush of air leave his lungs, deflating, as if he had been holding it in since the game had ended until he had stepped through the threshold of this hotel room.

He had been here earlier in the day, after morning practice, to take a nap before the game. It was like any other hotel room. One queen-sized bed; he hadn’t bothered to room with anyone this time, and he was glad for that decision, in retrospect, considering. The same plain furnishings. At some point halfway through last season, Kent had realized that they all blurred together, the hotel rooms the team stayed at on roadies. Sometimes he had woken up, unsure of what city or even what state he was in that morning, just aware that he wasn’t in his room at his apartment in Vegas and that more often than not there was a snoring teammate a few feet away in the other bed.

Usually that teammate was Troy— _Swoops_. He had been drafted two years before Kent had, but when Kent had been drafted to the Aces, it had only been Swoops sophomore year with the team after he had been bumped down to the Aces’ farm team for his first year. For some reason, he had taken rookie-Kent under his wing, and Kent couldn’t deny his gratitude because some days it had felt like Swoops was the only thing keeping him afloat.

Swoops was going to yell at him when he got a hold of Kent for acting like a baby tonight.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Kent grumbled, flopping down on his bed and burying his face into one of the pillows. It smelled too clean, too foreign. He was hit with the sudden ache to be _home_ , to curl up under his own blankets, in his own bed, to wallow in his pathetic self-pity. They were on the last few days of a 10-day roadie. An off-day tomorrow, though they had to catch a flight to Edmonton in the morning, then a game with the Oilers the day after, before Kent would be able to see his apartment again. It felt too far away.

He sucked in a deep breath, smushed his face further into the overly-stuffed pillow and tried to hold back the tears stinging in his eyes because Kent Parson was done crying.

Or he kept trying to tell himself he was, at least.

He really wasn’t, though.

Kent jumped when— some indiscernible amount of time later— there was a fierce rapping against his door.

He groaned quietly into his pillow. Whoever it was, he didn’t want to deal with them.

But the knocking didn’t let up. Kent felt the pangs of a headache settling in.

“Yo, Parse, I _know_ you’re in there, let me in.”

Swoops.

Shit.

“I’m not! Go away!” he called back.

“I swear to God— let me in, Kent. You have three fuckin’ seconds before I knock this door in.”

Shit.

He sounded pissed.

Kent forced himself up on exhausted limbs, shuffling to the door and swinging it open— glowering up the few inches Swoops had on him. “How the fuck you gonna explain to the hotel and management that you kicked a door down?” he bit out.

“Tell ‘em you were being a pain in the ass; management’ll understand.”

Kent frowned, rationality telling him it was a playful chirp and surely something he himself would have said— but his current mindset taking it too literally, twisting it dangerously into a panicked thought of: _what if management gets rid of me because I’m like this?_

Swoops’ face schooled into something less annoyed and more concerned, and he maneuvered Kent into the room, a hand wrapped around his bicep, closing the door once they were both inside. His hand lingered. “I’m just kidding, Kent,” he said, and Kent could hear the _‘I’m sorry’_ between the words— it almost made him feel worse, though, that he was nineteen, that he’s been in the world of hockey since he was six, but he still couldn’t handle a fucking harmless chirp thrown his way.

“I _know_ that,” he grumbled.

Swoops squeezed his bicep where he was still gripping it. “What’s up?”

Kent saw the concern in his eyes when he met them again, knew the true weight of the question— that it was meant as more of an _‘are you okay?’_ — but he wasn’t sure what he was supposed to say in response. A moment passed in which Kent was silent, but Swoops didn’t let up: didn’t stop watching him with those concerned brown eyes, so light sometimes they were more gold than anything. They were dark, now. Dark and concerned and caring and Kent hated it, because no one had looked at him like that in a while. He finally gave his head a small shake: _no, I’m not okay_.

Swoops led him to the bed, and Kent crawled onto it, sitting cross-legged by his pillows, folded inward, arms curled around himself. He watched Swoops sit down in a similar position after kicking his shoes off. And then he just watched Kent, a silent prompting to talk to him.

But Kent didn’t know how to talk. Not about what was really going on inside his head. He knew how to talk about hockey. He knew how to answer questions at pressers. He knew how to give superficial answers to throw people off his trail when he was spiraling.

He knew Swoops never fell for that.

Kent had figured that out a while ago, really. Swoops never pressed; this was the first time he had really, in any capacity, forced himself into Kent’s space to get him to talk, and even now Kent was sure if he didn’t speak, Swoops wouldn’t _press_. But he had seen the flickers of disbelief behind the older man’s eyes with every too-peppy ‘I’m great’ and ‘Nothing’s wrong’ and he had gotten the ‘I’m here when you need me’ talk that he was sure they both knew Kent wasn’t really going to take him up on.

“I keep fucking up,” Kent said, voice quiet.

Swoops raised an eyebrow, still just watching.

“They’re going to trade me, aren’t they? I’m shit…” He ran a hand down his face, and registered that his fingers were shaking. “They’re going to realize Kent Parson is _shit_.”

“Kent…” Swoops scooted closer. “No one is shit just because they’re having an off week.” Kent watched his fingers twitch— because it was too much to watch his face— hesitant, then reach out and sit softly against Kent’s left knee. “They’re not going to trade you just because of one bad week.”

“What if I keep having bad weeks?”

“You won’t.” Kent didn’t know how Swoops could sound so _certain_ when he said that, as if he had seen into Kent’s future and it held nothing but great things. That sounded completely _fake_.

“I’m a pain in the ass.”

Swoops huffed, a half-hearted sort of laugh, and Kent looked up toward his face to see him shaking his head. “Touché,” he said, quiet— then, louder: “We love your ass, though. The whole team. And one pain in the ass kid is nothing an NHL franchise’s management hasn’t dealt with before.”

It was Kent’s turn to snort out a half-hearted laugh. “No one loves my ass.”

Swoops’ fingers tightened around Kent’s knee. “Not true.” There was a smile to his voice, and sure enough, when Kent looked up, Swoops had a small smile on his face. “I love your ass.” Was he blushing? “Like, literally and metaphorically.”

“Are you flirting with me while I’m here actually trying to spill my guts to you.” It wasn’t a question, for some reason. Kent certainly should have poised it that way, he thought, because inwardly his mind was screaming ‘ _what is happening right now!_ ’ at him.

“Seemed like a fair trade,” Swoops answered easily. “My secrets for your secrets, right?”

Kent rolled his eyes again, then sucked in a deep breath. “Jeff…”

“Yeah?”

He wanted to ask how he _knew_. How had he come to the conclusion that flirting with Kent was okay— that it might be reciprocated— that Kent wouldn’t run out of here right now and tell the world that Jeff Troy wasn’t straight? Kent thought he had hid it. He had pretended to take girls home. He didn’t even think he had looked at another man with interest in… in who knows how long. Sometimes he thought of Jack and didn’t even want to _think_ about looking at another man with interest because it made his stomach sick to consider the what-ifs, the tangle of strings in getting involved with anyone. But Jeff _knew_ …

“When you told me about your ex… what happened before the draft… you never said it was a girl. You specifically avoided mentioning that,” Swoops explained after a moment of silence, like he could hear Kent’s thoughts. (And Kent had told him, a little, one night last season after Jeff had found him huddled in the corner of the bathroom in the hotel room they were sharing in Montréal. Kent had been having a panic attack, he had learned since. Jack had been haunting his mind. Because Jack was _so close_ , because it would be _so easy_ to go to Bob and Alicia’s house and… Kent didn’t know what he might have done, hadn’t gotten that far before breaking down in the bathroom, everything once again feeling _too much_. He had owed Jeff some semi-truthful explanation for finding him like that, he had known.) Kent gazed at him, half-wary and half-relieved. “If it had been a girl— if you didn’t have anything to hide— I know that trick, Kent.”

Kent shifted, curled up on himself more by bringing his knees to his chest. Jeff’s fingers fell from his knee and Kent watched them fall into Jeff’s lap instead. “You won’t tell anyone, right?” he whispered.

“Why would I tell anyone?” Jeff responded, voice gentle. Kent was sure it was rhetorical; even if it wasn’t, he didn’t have a good answer. “I’m not going to out you— or myself.” He stopped, but Kent thought it was more of a pause. “I mean it, though— that I like you.” His hand swept through his hair. “Have liked you. And I’ve been fucking worried about you.” He looked Kent in the face again. “You can’t just like… fuckin’ run off after away games like that.”

“You knew I’d be here.”

“I _hoped_ you’d be here. You didn’t answer your phone.”

“I haven’t looked at it…”

“Exactly my point.” Swoops rolled his eyes, and Kent pouted. “Look…” The older man shifted closer again, shifted to sit beside Kent and drape an arm around his tense shoulders. Kent took a moment to relax into the affection. “Honestly, what’s wrong?”

“I’m scared I’m not enough.” It came out as another whisper.

“Parse.” There was a certain ring of demand in Jeff’s voice, and Kent turned his head to look at the other man. “You’re more than enough.” He raised an eyebrow. “In a lot of ways.” Kent shook his head, disbelieving. No one had ever said that before… Why was someone saying that now? Jeff frowned, unhooked his arm from Kent’s shoulders, and instead shifted so that he had a leg on either side of Kent, so that he was gazing down at him. It could have been intimidating, Kent thought, but Jeff’s eyes were still too soft to make Kent feel unsafe. “You’re _amazing_ , Kent.”

“Stop being a dork,” Kent managed to get out after a silent few seconds, annoyed at the way his words caught in his throat to betray him.

“If you don’t know I am a dork at this point, I’m gonna be disappointed.” Jeff grinned.

“Oh, believe me, I knew that the second I met you,” Kent shot back.

“Good.” Jeff sat back a little bit, resting his ass on Kent’s thighs, and Kent wasn’t going to admit it was very distracting.

Which, maybe, was Jeff’s plan.

The game was already feeling far away. His nerves were still there— but they always were, to a degree— he felt significantly calmer with Jeff right here. That fact in itself wasn’t completely new to Kent, that Jeff could calm him down with his presence; what was new was _this_ : the intimacy, the way Kent felt like maybe he could actually trust this man with himself. Swoops wasn’t Jack. He never had been. There was a small amount of similarities between them, but far more differences.

Jeff cared. His gaze was far too sincere for Kent to believe he didn’t care.

“Can you just kiss me already?” Kent blurted out, feeling his cheeks light up in a blush.

Jeff lit up, too, in a different way: his eyes brightened into something a bit closer to amber and he nodded enthusiastically. “It’d be my pleasure,” he replied.

“Great.” Kent gave a little smirk, and started to lean forward—

Jeff leaned in, too, a little too quick in his enthusiasm, their positions leading to a painful _thud_ of foreheads.

“ _Fuck_ , Jesus,” Kent muttered, holding a hand over his forehead, blocking his eyes.

He heard Jeff start to laugh— felt it, too, from the way he still straddled Kent’s thighs. Kent splayed his fingers to watch the man. Swoops’ face always lit up when he laughed and Kent had always liked to see it happen. “Let’s try this again? You stay still,” Jeff suggested, still grinning— and Kent was grinning now, too— and gave him a comical, raised-eyebrow look.

“Right,” Kent acquiesced. He could do that. He moved his hand out of the way, let it instead find a place at the curve of Jeff’s hip.

Jeff leaned in again, and this time his lips successfully brushed against Kent’s. Softly, curiously, almost a little shyly. Now that they weren’t going to headbutt each other again, Kent moved, throwing Jeff’s caution to the wind and turning it into a _real_ kiss. He hadn’t kissed anyone in so long— not a real kiss, anyway; not something more than a heat-of-the-moment celly after winning the Stanley Cup, nothing no one else did on occasion, nothing that really grabbed attention. It felt so good to have Jeff’s lips against his: semi-chapped but soft against his own nonetheless. Kent’s other hand rose to Jeff’s other hip, and he pulled the larger man closer against him with a quiet noise in the back of his throat.

When Jeff pulled back, he looked breathless, but had a grin spread over his face, eyes glittering. _Adorable_ , Kent thought.

“Shit,” Jeff whispered out, “That was… real nice…”

“Yeah,” Kent agreed, giving a breathless laugh.

**Author's Note:**

> Yo join me in Kent Parson Loving Hell over on tumblr!!! @kentvparsin
> 
> Hale is borrowed from my Check Please partner in crime who is The Best.
> 
> I have become ridiculously obsessed over Swoops recently and needed to sate my itch for some Parswoops in between all my Patater-ing.


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